by John Harvey
“Would you say,” Carl asked, leaning forward, “the bruises on Jane Peterson’s body could have come from a fall such as she described?”
Prentiss’ mouth was dry. “They could have, yes.”
“It never occurred to you that they might have been caused in any other way?”
Prentiss shook his head. “Not … not really, no.”
“Not,” Lynn said, “after what you told me about her husband? You said he was a bully, you remember that?”
“Yes, but I didn’t mean … That wasn’t what I meant.”
“What did you mean, then?”
“Verbally. Mentally. The way he got on at her. Not the sort of thing you’re talking about now.”
“Really?” Lynn said. “It never occurred to you that Alex Peterson might have been behind those injuries? You never for one moment thought he might have been hitting his wife?”
Prentiss sat on his hands. He didn’t say anything for some little time. It was quiet in the room, quiet outside. “All right, if I’m honest, it did go through my mind. Just the possibility. But Jane, she’d been so clear about what had happened, so detailed. To have questioned her would have been like calling her a liar. So I said nothing. She … we never mentioned it again.”
“A shame,” Carl said, “in the circumstances.”
“The circum … what? You don’t think, you’re not suggesting …?”
“This friend of yours you spoke about,” Lynn said, “Patricia, she used to teach with Jane?”
“Yes. Yes, that’s right.”
“You wouldn’t have an address for her, I suppose? Just in case we need to get in touch.”
“Yes,” said Prentiss distractedly. “Yes, I must have it somewhere. If you’ll just give me a few minutes to look …”
“Wanker,” Carl said dismissively when they were back on the pavement.
“As long as that’s all,” Lynn said.
“You’re serious?”
Lynn unlocked the car door. “Maybe. As far as we know he’s unattached, doesn’t seem to mix much with other people, works from home. There’s a lot of things on our offender profile that he fits.”
Carl slotted his belt buckle into place. “Checking him out some more won’t hurt.”
“Right. And this Patricia, where did he say she was?”
“Peterborough.”
“Close enough to be worth a call.” Lynn checked the rearview mirror and pulled away.
“You know what’s getting to Prentiss, don’t you?” Carl said. “Thinking if he’d done something to stop this happening back when he had the chance, Jane Peterson might still be alive now. Maybe that’s what’s making him twitchy. Bad conscience, nothing more.”
“Probably,” Lynn said. “We’ll see.”
Thirty-six
“Thirty thousand the pair?”
“That’s the going price.”
“Bullshit!” Grabianski said, his voice louder than intended.
“Take it or leave it.” Eddie Snow shrugged as if he didn’t care.
They were sitting in a pub in Camden, one of those places that had been fashionably stripped back to bare boards, tat and clutter peeled away, a large room lit by candles and a few tastefully concealed ceiling lights, guest beers, a menu that included samphire and lemon grass, scallops and black pudding served on mashed potato.
The rest of the place was more or less empty at that time of day: a couple of thirtyish men in bad suits dragging out their last beer over the remains of a business lunch; an upmarket mum sitting outside with her two kids, waiting for them to sit back down and finish their fruit sorbet.
Grabianski was drinking a large tomato juice with Worcester sauce, Tabasco, ice, and lemon. He needed a clear head.
“I thought you wanted to get rid?” Snow said.
“So I do.”
“And fast?”
“Fast doesn’t mean throwing them away.”
One of the children outside was crying; the men in suits were preparing to haggle over their bill. Round the corner on Arlington Road, a car alarm sounded and then was still, sounded and was still.
“Clearly,” Grabianski said, “someone’s heard of him in Dubai.”
“Bahrain, actually, but who’s counting?”
“I am.”
Fast enough to take Grabianski by surprise, Snow covered one of his hands with his own and squeezed. “Jerry, don’t be such a hardass all the time, know what I mean?” When he let go his grip, save for several bright red marks, Grabianski’s knuckles were white.
“What’s your cut on this?” Grabianski asked. “What do you call it, finder’s fee?”
Snow leaned back and crossed his legs, signaled to the barman for a fresh glass of wine. “Forty percent and cheap at the price.”
“Okay. All I’m saying,” Grabianski said, conciliatory, “if you can push a little, without putting the whole thing at risk, get a few thousand more, where’s the harm?”
The barman lifted Snow’s glass away and set another in its place.
“When we first started talking about this,” Snow said, “you were coming on like you was Linford in the Olympic Games. Couldn’t wait to get on the move. Now all of a sudden, ‘Yeah, Eddie, no rush, take your time, let’s get the best deal we can.’” Snow was looking at him, direct. “What happened?”
Grabianski shrugged impressive shoulders.
“Only,” Snow said, “if I thought you was back in touch with that cunt Thackray, playing us off, one against the other, I’d see you lived long enough to regret it.”
Thackray had left his car where Grabianski had suggested, not in the car park directly behind Kenwood House, but the one farther along toward Jack Straw’s Castle, left it there and walked back down to where Grabianski was waiting, seated near the faded rhododendron bushes either side of Doctor Johnson’s summer house. It was early in the evening and the breeze carried with it a certain chill now the sun had dipped behind some wavering cloud. Wearing a sheepskin car coat, Thackray looked like a man expecting winter.
“We’ve hit,” he announced, “something of a problem.” As yet, he had barely stopped walking. “My buyer in Japan, he only wants the one piece. The Departing Day study, of course. The other,” Thackray sighed, “he claims it’s not worth the price of air freight. Never mind the insurance.”
“How much,” Grabianski asked, “is he prepared to pay?”
“Twenty-five thousand sterling, dollar equivalent, of course.”
Grabianski moved along the bench and Thackray, tugging at his trousers so they didn’t bag unnecessarily at the knees, sat down. Grabianski caught himself wondering if there was anyone born after 1955, any male, for whom that was still an automatic gesture.
“You know,” Thackray said, “I don’t think I’m going to be able to push him any harder on this.”
“That’s fine,” Grabianski said. “If that’s the best deal there is …”
“Excellent.” Thackray sealed the bargain with a sheepskin-warm handshake. “Now, if you’d care to join me, I thought a quick look round Kenwood House here before closing. There’s a lovely little Vermeer.”
Grabianski made a show of glancing at his watch. “Better not.”
“Suit yourself. I’ll be in touch.” And Grabianski stood watching Vernon Thackray walk along the narrow, jinking path and across a small diagonal of lawn. Whatever risk there was of being seen with Thackray, best, especially now, to keep it to a minimum.
There was a steady roll of traffic coming off Spaniards Road at Whitestone Pond and turning down toward the Heath. Grabianski pushed his phone card into the slot and waited for the little illuminated message telling him it was okay to dial.
“Faron,” he said, recognizing her flat, nasal tone, “Jerry Grabianski. I’d like to talk to Eddie.”
She told him to wait and he heard the receiver being set down with a soft chunk. There was music in the background, none of the three or four things Grabianski might have recognized: music never his strong point.
“Probably. Tell him it’s to do with what we were discussing earlier today.” Grabianski could hear other voices now, something of a party, warming up, he guessed, for the night ahead.
“What?” Snow’s voice was unnecessarily loud, pitched against the noise.
“The deal you mentioned. I’ve been thinking about it and what you were saying makes sense. If this is the best deal we’re going to get, let’s take it now.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure.”
“You know we’re not talking the day after tomorrow, right? Prob’ly not even next week. There’s always money to be moved around, transportation, na-de-na-de-nah.”
“That’s okay. I know you’re not going to hang about. I’ll leave all that up to you.”
“Great. Oh, and Jerry …”
“Yes?”
“Not right now, but there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about, okay? Piece of business I might be able to put your way. Your line, know what I mean?”
Oh, yes, Grabianski thought, maybe he did; in the small square of mirrored glass, he watched his face brighten into a smile.
Table lamp shining, chilled glass of Stolichnaya close at hand, Grabianski shuffled through the cards he had bought at the exhibition, deciding which to choose. It had to be The Millinery Shop, the vividness of that lime green scarf not so striking in reproduction, but she would remember all the same. He uncapped his fountain pen, a silver-inlaid Waterman’s with gold nib he had come across in a seventeenth-century-style writing desk which had proved disappointingly fake. He wanted to be careful what he wrote.
Thirty-seven
Thinking about Jill, the way she had looked when he had left that morning, Khan overshot his exit from the motorway and had to drive south another seventeen miles before he could make a turn. The Dray Horse was a sprawling three-story building whose white stucco frontage had long since turned a carbon monoxide shade of gray. There were two car parks, one to either side, pot-holed and in need of resurfacing. Even the horse itself had seen better days, plodding along in front of a bulging brewery wagon, shoulders straining, head bowed, paint flecked and faded on a sign which swayed creakily in the burgeoning east wind.
Khan left his car facing the road and rattled the handle on the front door. The sign written in white paint above his head read Lawrence Gerald Fitzpatrick, licensed to sell wines and spirits. Khan was about to try the bell when he saw someone approaching through the mottled glass.
“If it’s a drink you want, you’re too early; if it’s something you’re selling, we’re not buying.”
He was a bearded man who wore his belly the way a camel wears its hump, except at the front. The whiskers around his mouth were stained reddish-brown with nicotine.
“Mr. Fitzpatrick?”
“Depends who’s asking.”
Khan identified himself and the man shook his head. “Them lights you saw on, round midnight was it? That was just the bar staff clearing up. And if it’s the music, well, the renewal license is in the post.”
“It’s not that I’ve come about, it’s the phone.”
“Bloody hell! Sending the likes of you out here for that now, are they? I stuck a check in first class mail, Sat’day.”
Patient, Khan explained why he was there. The telephone matching the number Mollie had passed on to Resnick was, indeed, out in the hall, directly across from the ladies toilet. The gents, smelling richly now of disinfectant, was farther along. The harness that kept the phone attached to the wall had worked itself loose by a couple of screws, and the mouthpiece, originally cream, was now virtually black with the residue of phlegm and so much bad breath. A calendar listing the dates of the principal Newmarket race meetings hung from the wall at a convenient height for doodling and several neat pornographic conceits shared its margins with a myriad of numbers and barely decipherable messages.
“I’ll have to borrow this,” Khan said, indicating the calendar. “You’ll get it back all in good time.”
“Aye, when it’s good and out of date, I’ll wager.”
Khan took out his notebook and began to copy down the irregular curve of telephone numbers that had been written directly onto the wall. By the time he had done a quick check in the local directory, he’d ascertained two-thirds of them belonged to taxi companies, and one of the most frequent of the others seemed to connect with a sauna and massage parlor in Saffron Walden.
“I wanted to ask you,” Khan said, “about a call that came through here just after eleven thirty the Saturday before last.”
“Morning or night?” Fitzgerald asked.
“Morning. Ring any bells?”
Fitzgerald thought back; from the pained expression on his face it wasn’t something he bothered with too often. “No,” he said finally, “can’t say as it does. You could ask Len, though. He’s in later. He might have picked up on something.”
Len Bassett was a soft-spoken man in his late fifties who walked slightly on a slant as the result of a replacement hip. He came up with three possibilities more or less straight off: a market gardener from Burwell who sometimes used the pub to take orders, a commercial traveler in fancy goods who provided all and sundry to corner shops and sub-post offices from Lowestoft to Northampton, and that bald feller, tall, you know the one I mean, Lawrence, always carrying one of them black briefcases wherever he goes, never lets it out of his sight. What’s his name now? Small whisky and ginger ale, that’s what he has. Grants, Bells, Teachers, doesn’t care. Once you’ve smothered it with ginger ale, tastes the same anyway.
“You can’t remember his name?” Khan asked.
Neither man could.
Khan set two of his cards on the bar counter. “If either of you do remember anything more, I’d appreciate it if you got in touch.”
The men looked at one another. “Right,” they both said.
Khan stopped off on the A45 near Fen Ditton and bought some cut flowers; if he made good time getting back, he might take a chance and nip to the flat before reporting back to the station. It was Jill’s day for the late shift at Central and with any luck she might still be around.
Alex Peterson’s dental surgery was on the raised first floor of one of those large, bay-fronted buildings on College Street, leading down the Hill to Wellington Circus. The receptionist viewed Resnick with suspicion, a man trying to muscle in on the appointments list by dint of waving his warrant card around. But after some discussion on the intercom, Peterson’s dental nurse, a young Muslim woman with her head and lower face covered above her white uniform, came through and informed Resnick in a soft voice that if he could wait for just five minutes, Mr. Peterson would be able to see him.
Five minutes, as they do in dentists’ waiting rooms, became fifteen. Peterson emerged in conversation with a middle-aged woman holding a handkerchief to one side of her face and doing her best to look brave despite the pain.
“Inspector …”
“If there’s somewhere we could talk privately?”
Peterson led him back into the surgery, from which the nurse had now disappeared. “You’ve found something? About what happened?” His voice was anxious, the dark hollows scooped below his eyes suggested tears, lack of sleep. The lingering smell in the room-metallic, medicinal-brought Resnick suddenly back to his childhood, be brave, this is going to hurt just a little bit.
“Really, it’s a question,” Resnick said. “It may be nothing.”
“Go on.”
“Your wife, as far as you know, did she have friends in the Cambridge area? Newmarket, possibly. Somewhere around there. There was no one on the list you gave us.”
Peterson blinked. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”
“It might not be important …”
Peterson’s hand was on Resnick’s arm; his breath, mint-flavored, on his face. “Tell me, please.”
“A phone call she may have
made, that’s all. We can’t even be certain it was her.”
“But you think she made a call to Cambridge, that’s what you’re saying? I don’t understand. When was this? Is that where you think she might have gone?”
“As yet we just don’t know.”
“But it must be important, otherwise why would you be here?”
Resnick sighed. “I’m here because we’re checking everything, every little thing that might give us a lead to what happened.” He looked at Peterson for a moment. “Believe me, as soon there’s anything definite, I’ll let you know.”
“Really? I’d like to believe that was true.”
“Your wife was killed,” Resnick said. “I’ve no way of knowing how that must feel. But I do know how important it is to understand what happened. And why. You have my word. If this leads anywhere, I will keep you informed.”
Slowly, Peterson nodded. “Thank you. And I’m sorry if …”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
Back at the Ropewalk there were two messages waiting: one from Lynn to say that she had tracked down Prentiss’ ex-girlfriend Patricia Falk in Peterborough and arranged to meet her; the other was from Hannah-monkfish with grilled aubergine, how did that sound? Resnick thought it sounded good.
Thirty-eight
On either side of the road as Lynn drove, neatly hedged fields spun away to small horizons. At dinner last night with Sharon Garnett-a curry washed down with bottles of Kingfisher, and the usual bad coffee made palatable by After Eights-she had tried to talk through how she felt about working again with Resnick, so soon after thinking she had made the break. And the truth was, it didn’t feel too bad.
Well, as she had sought to explain, it was different, being part of a far larger team, not cooped up in that substation at Canning Circus with just a handful of others and Resnick looming over everything. She was a sergeant now, more status, expected to use her initiative, take responsibility. And the case they were working on, a murder, possibly five murders all down to the same person-how much more serious could Serious Crimes get?